response to editorial on farming

[Two Americas]

Mary asked for my response to an editorial in the CS Monitor. I am going to take it point by point and comment.

A food agenda for Obama
Now's the time to reinvent America's farm and food policies.
By Christopher D. Cook
from the December 26, 2008 edition
article here

San Francisco - Within hours of former Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack's nomination last week as Agriculture secretary, websites were humming with well-documented critiques of his affinity for genetically engineered crops, agribusiness giant Monsanto, heavily polluting factory farms, and other Big Farm interests.

Some critics expressed outrage, others surprise, especially since they had mounted a vigorous, 55,000-plus strong online petition to persuade President-elect Barack Obama to nominate someone more progressive who would promote sustainable food and farming.

I was surprised to see Vilsack named, because he has no background in agriculture. The critiques, though, were far from "well documented" or even every persuasive.

The need for sweeping change could not be clearer when it comes to our food: At taxpayer expense, current policy subsidizes large corporate farms and destructive industrial agriculture, which rob the countryside of economic diversity and precious environmental resources, such as water and topsoil.

"At taxpayer expense" always worries me, because it is such a right wing talking point. Yes, the federal government subsidizes farming, or more accurately subsidizes eating. Yes, the subsidies go to row crops - wheat, corn, soy - and yes, that makes for cheap feed for livestock, and yes welthy people who are not even farmers game the system and gobble up a lot of the subsidy dollars.

However, that is not "current policy" since the last Farm Bill caps subsidies to the big players and also send money to "specialty crops" - fruits, vegetables, and nuts.

The author strings some bad things together here that are not necessarily connected - "large corporate farms," "destructive industrial agriculture," robbing the countryside of "economic diversity," and robbing "precious environmental resources." Water is given as an example of robbed precious resources, as is "soil." That is a tip off right there, since water cannot be destroyed. Misused and polluted, controlled and denied to people, yes, but there is no way to "rob" water.

Capitalism is the cause of the problems in agriculture. Since liberals can't say that, they have to come up with these fanciful scenarios and catchy phrases. The same phrases get used over and over again until everyone assumes they are true. "At taxpayer expense" is the solution, not a problem. The liberals are true believers is the "free market" and "personal choice" consumerism in lieu of public food and agriculture programs. They want "green" and "organic" choices when they shop, and argue for that with religious zeal. It is the free market they worship, not "sustainable farming" as they claim, because they don't have a clue what that means.

What does the phrase "large corporate farms" mean? Grain is grown on large spreads. Why not? Very few farms are incorporated. Specialty crops are grown on smaller farms. Specialization and monocropping are caused by a number of factors - the population that would support 100 acre farms with everything from dairy to fruit has moved too far away from the farms; price pressure has reduced the margin of error, so farmers must concentrate on what they can grow with the least risk; food ignorance among the public has led to demand for fewer varieties, demand for appearance and size over nutrition and flavor, and little awareness of seasons and regional differences.

"Economic diversity" is another code phrase, that represents converting farm land to non-farm uses. Farming itself is diversity - communities are largely self-sufficient.

These same subsidies, and anemic regulatory enforcement, encourage an increasingly monopolized food system, and a "cheap food" policy that lards us with fatty, processed foods – the cost of which is ultimately dear, more than $100 billion annually for obesity and diet-related diseases. Today's food system also generates a sizable portion of America's greenhouse gases, and rests on fast-dwindling and volatile oil supplies.

Enforcement and regulation have collapsed, yes.

"Cheap food" was the idea, yes, when the government intervened because people were facing famine. What is wrong with "cheap food?" The author betrays his upper class pretensions right there. The author is perfectly free to go buy his expensive "organic" or gourmet or whatever, but farming must feed all of the people, not just the beautiful few, the "progressives" with their fussy and ill-informed preferences.

"Processed foods" has absolutely nothing to do with farming. It is just thrown in to the mix in order to raise fears and confuse people. You may as well blame iron mines for gunshot deaths. But gratuitous and false swipes at farmers and farming like this reveal the true liberal agenda. It is farmers and farming they are attacking, not "corporations" not "Monsanto" (though I wish they would) and mist certainly not capitalism or Wall Street. They attack farming because it is cooperative, it is regulated, it is egalitarian in its commitment to feed all of the people, it is largely socialized and protected from the financial industry. They want their free market organic choices and they want "green" and "enlightened" capitalism. That is a threat to agriculture.

Then we have "today's food system also generates a sizable portion of America's greenhouse gases." WTF ever. Can anyone translate that for me?

The last point is a lie, and a common one - agriculture "rests on fast-dwindling and volatile oil supplies ." The use of oil on farms supports suburbia, not farming. It allowed 90% of the people living on the farm to move to suburbia and do whatever it is they do there - all of it "sustainable" and "organic" no doubt. (eye roll) If we stop using oil on the farm, the people on the suburbs will have to move back to and work on farms. Nothing will change in farming. It is suburbia that is unsustainable, not farming. Farming is being perverted to support suburbia.

Now is the time for something different – change we can eat.

Can we go back to change we can believe in? geez.

As Mr. Obama weighs a massive stimulus package, he should include new funding streams that promote sustainable food – to build up alternatives such as farmer's markets, local "foodshed" programs that promote consumption of local produce, and farm-to-institution projects that encourage schools, hospitals, and other large buyers to purchase local organic foods when possible.

Nonsense. None of this feeds the public nor does it support agriculture. It caters to the whims and fancies of people in the upper 10% income bracket, spoiled people who have no concept of food or food production, while the needs of the rest of the population are neglected. It creates a two-tier food system - one for the privileged few, and another for the unwashed masses who are "insufficiently evolved" and have the wrong spiritual values.

No federal money should go to food boutiques and yuppie organic utopias.

Schools and hospitals already bu

y local produce, thanks to existing government programs.

We have been over "organic" many times. Suffice it to say that it is an illusion and a hustle.

The change we need in food is as urgent as any we face – changes that affect national health, energy security, global warming, and more.

Such a lie. Te author has concocted together a very weak thesis here that blames farming for all of the problems in the world, all for the purpose of pushing a very narrow, elitist, libertarian and reactionary agenda.

1. New public investments targeting sustainable agriculture, defined as organic, small- to mid-sized, diversified farming.

The missing ingredient is farmers and farm workers. There is no way that suburbia can survive and we can also have diversified (the 100 acre grow everything model from 50 years ago) farms unless 90% of the people now living in suburbia move back to the farm. Since that is not going to happen, that means that this funnels public funds into farming that only serves the few - the organic zealots and foodies.

2. New investments in local/regional food networks and foodsheds – to help build up the connections between farmers and consumers, to open up and expand new markets for organic farmers and those considering the transition; for more farmer's markets and food stores that feature local produce.

Every time he slips the word "organic" into a sentence, that means food for the upscale few. Otherwise, what he is advocating already exists - to serve all of the people.

Still no mention of "capitalism" or the financial industry, or the energy industry, or development and suburbanization, or "free trade" as the causes of the problems in agriculture.

3. A moratorium on agribusiness mergers, and strenuous antitrust provisions and enforcement to protect what little is left of diversity in the food economy.

Anti-trust is always good. But it is not the farmers merging. It has nothing to do with farming. Smash Wall Street, not farming.

4. A moratorium on all new genetically modified (GMO) products, and an expansion of existing ones, and appointment of a blue-ribbon panel/commission to assess the impact of GMO foods on our environment and our health.

Agreed, but this does not go anywhere near far enough and is very weak and tame. We need to stop ALL patenting and copyrighting of life, ALL corporate funded and corrupted research, ALL introductions of crops and products into farming without testing and regulation by public agencies.

But the liberals will not go there. They just want to spank Monsanto and have their organic veggie choices.

5. A moratorium on – and gradual phasing out of – concentrated animal feeding operations, aka factory farms, which are among the nation's top polluters of water and air, and breeders of widespread and virulent bacterial strains.

Agreed.

6. Dramatically expanded regulatory enforcement and staffing in the US Department of Agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration to protect food safety and meat industry labor and environmental practices.

Agreed.

7. Slowing the hazardously fast meatpacking (and poultry) assembly line, to protect workers and consumers.

The workers in that industry are organizing. That is what we should support. Not just there, everywhere. Inspection is the solution to hazards to the public. "Slowing" something is meaningless. Let the Union negotiate that on the ground.

8. Incentives for small-scale urban, suburban, and rural farming ventures oriented toward diversified local food systems.

Tax breaks and grants for upscale entrepreneurs and hobbyists. No, no, no, no. There are existing programs to assist farmers. Stop with the "at tax payers expense" right wing rhetoric. If the organic people want to farm, there is plenty of land and federal funding available. But they have to farm.

9. Bold public investment in a raft of public awareness campaigns that build support, and expand markets and demand, for sustainable alternatives such as urban agriculture and gardening, and reducing fast-food consumption.

The USDA does this. But the big problem is that for the first time in history, we have a population that is 3 and 4 generations removed from their food source. Suburbanization again. Trying to remake farming to support the whims of the most upscale segment of suburbia is social suicide.

10. Fill in the blank, and send me your thoughts at www.christopherdcook.com.

He and I will be talking, no doubt at some time in the future.

Food is a vital cornerstone of both individual life and civil society, and our current system is making us fatter, churning out greenhouse gases, and abusing workers and animals.

Capitalism is doing those things, not farming.

[choppedliver]

Change we can eat???? won't pennies give us copper poisoning??

I hadn't more than skimmed it Mike, knew you'd know the skinny, thanks for the feedback.

[Kid of the Black Hole]

Hey Mike,

Believe it or not I am not against farming or hicks and I am not any type of city-slicker. You can ask Megan about this, but I pretty much AM a hick. I've lived in the country for almost my entire life, although it is about overrun by development now.

That is just to tell you where I am coming from on this

What I think is that socialism is not about egalitarianism and its not about small scale production or glorifying the individual craftsman. These are no different than the trappings imposed by liberalism of "equality", "justice", "democracy" and all of the rest.

We are talking about ending class society -- ending the practice of surplus labor of one class who are the vast majority being expropriated by another class, the ruling classs. We are talking about ending the dismal, wretched fate that workers are consigned to by class society..including workers in farming.

But you are talking about keeping farming basically the same but ending capitalist relations everywhere else. You see this as a return to some kind of communalistic set of social relations, whereas I am saying that it instead constitutes a preservation of capitalist relations.

That is the crux of where we are disagreeing. From my perspective, the emphasis on farming is good as a criticism of the flailing, intrusive tentacles of liberalism and of societal conditions as a whole and as a defense of especially beleaguered workers..

..but it is well wide of the mark jaunting off on a tangent, when it is held up as an alternative model, a formula that should be studied or emulated by socialists and socialism.

Mike, Lenin declared the socialization of production complete over 100 years ago now. Regardless of if he was 100% right at the time, it is indisputably "true" now with whatever limited exceptions. I ask how that "socialization" relates to the socialization you are seeing in farm communities.

I ask how the socialization in farming overcomes capitalist relations without elimination of "ownership". You've replied that ownership is a very nebulous and ill-defined thing in farming, of which I have no doubt. But that is not the same thing as saying it does not exist. In the last it is the only thing that DOES exist.

Gotta kill it at the root Mike..

[m pyre]

What I think is that socialism is not about egalitarianism and its not about small scale production or glorifying the individual craftsman. These are no different than the trappings imposed by liberalism of "equality", "justice", "democracy" and all of the rest.

Whether they are mere "trappings of liberalism" really depends on how one seeks to achieve them. If one merely pays lip service, then one is being a liberal. If one works to alter the system to return power to those who are providing the labor (and in the case of farming, the land worked), then we're not talking about simple superficial liberal palliatives.

If socialism isn't about returning power to the small-scale worker, the artisan, the craftsman... but instead is about destroying classes, and nothing else... I submit that socialism will fail forever. One can imagine that nobody cares about the quality of labor or the quality of the products of that labor, but anyone doing that imagining is naive to the point of futility. It DOES matter whether someone's work is focused and intentional and driven toward quality. It DOES matter whether what one produces is durable.

Socialism shouldn't be simply trying to destroy "classes" in the abstract. Classification will exist as long as people have differing talents, varying tools for work, unpredictable results in labor. A poorly designed tool will require more labor to yield the same result. Thus, those who use the poorly designed tool will not be properly rewarded for their labor, because their labor was wasteful thanks to the inferior tool.

As I've said, I haven't read Marx. But if Marx doesn't recognize this, he's made some glaring errors.

[Pinko]

We are talking about ending class society -- ending the practice of surplus labor of one class who are the vast majority being expropriated by another class, the ruling classs. We are talking about ending the dismal, wretched fate that workers are consigned to by class society..including workers in farming.

But you are talking about keeping farming basically the same but ending capitalist relations everywhere else. You see this as a return to some kind of communalistic set of social relations, whereas I am saying that it instead constitutes a preservation of capitalist relations.

That is the crux of where we are disagreeing.

Somewhere I read that capitalism comes last to agriculture (something Mike has as much said and obviously knows in his gut thanks to good old labor).

Perhaps Mike sees "staying the same" as he does because he is reacting against capitalist encroachment. (Although I'll grant you it may be a little late for that since Mike probably also is a wage laborer...)

I can't find the source of the claim that capital comes last to the farm and will leave the farm last, but that seems intuitively obvious to me. This has to do with agriculture being the underpinning of literally everything else. The rise and fall of a capitalist epoch must rest its curve upon a foundation wider than either end's tail lest people be too busy trying to subsist for anything else to be going on.

Or worse.

For perspective -

Over half of farms are under 100 acres. Almost sixty percent of farms do less than $ 10,000 a year in sales. Over 2/3 of farmers own their means of production.

Not hard to suspect that things look a little different from within that fishbowl, IMO.

For m pyre: there is nothing special about craftsman, small producers, etc. Workers are workers. Socialism is about liberating them all. As for "restoring" them, that implies a trip backwards in time. No such thing is possible. Thus all the "return to the good old days" memes are at their base reactionary. Onward is the only direction available. Upward is is the dream. "Destroying classes," abstract or otherwise, is the means to realize the dream.

[m pyre]

For m pyre: there is nothing special about craftsman, small producers, etc. Workers are workers. Socialism is about liberating them all. As for "restoring" them, that implies a trip backwards in time. No such thing is possible. Thus all the "return to the good old days" memes are at their base reactionary. Onward is the only direction available. Upward is is the dream. "Destroying classes," abstract or otherwise, is the means to realize the dream.

I'm sorry, but I don't see how generic platitudes achieve anything durable. You can pretend that once "classes" are destroyed, all will balance and no "classes" will result. Such pretense is as artificial as the magician's sleight-of-hand. Anyone who's ever done any form of labor meaningful to him- or herself knows that there are different levels of quality in the labor itself, and in the product of that labor. I have seen it in my own intellectual works, as well as my physical labors.

As far as I can tell, the human intellectual ability to distinguish levels of quality doesn't disappear merely because capitalism is destroyed. I'd love to hear someone explain to me otherwise. And I don't think that denigrating me as one thinking he's a prophet --as Kid tried in an earlier thread-- is any form of explanation as to how Marxism can deal with human qualities.

[Two Americas]

Hey Mike,

Believe it or not I am not against farming or hicks and I am not any type of city-slicker. You can ask Megan about this, but I pretty much AM a hick. I've lived in the country for almost my entire life, although it is about overrun by development now.

That is just to tell you where I am coming from on this

No problem. Micanopy or somewhere near. Is your family from there originally?

What I think is that socialism is not about egalitarianism and its not about small scale production or glorifying the individual craftsman. These are no different than the trappings imposed by liberalism of "equality", "justice", "democracy" and all of the rest.

Woileheartedly agree. I said "egalitarian" to point out the hypocrisy of the liberal activists. I do think the words justice and equality can be useful in political discussions, though.

We are talking about ending class society -- ending the practice of surplus labor of one class who are the vast majority being expropriated by another class, the ruling class. We are talking about ending the dismal, wretched fate that workers are consigned to by class society..including workers in farming.

Agreed. As I promised, at some point I want to spend more time understanding what Marx had to say about farming, hopefully with your assistance, and also understand the Kulak history better and understand what Lenin was saying. Marx is brilliant on the subject of ag but it needs more study on my part. Marx talks about the rural conditions in England before the Enclosure Acts, and I think there is something there - that shift from cooperative communal farming to industrial capitalism.

Chlamor has done a spectacular job of bringing the stories to us about the plight of people around the world as the capitalist juggernaut rolls over them. That is not to romanticize primitive people or rural people. I once argued with him about that myself. His image - people being driven from their traditional land and herded into slums - is powerful I think. We know what happens once people are in those slums, but it is useful to talk about the other end of the process - what was lost, why they needed to be driven off pf the land for the capitalists to be able to exploit the resources and the labor.

But you are talking about keeping farming basically the same but ending capitalist relations everywhere else. You see this as a return to some kind of communalistic set of social relations, whereas I am saying that it instead constitutes a preservation of capitalist relations.

No, I think you misunderstand me there. We can go into that in more detail. I am not arguing for keeping capitalistic relations in agriculture - far from it.

That is the crux of where we are disagreeing. From my perspective, the emphasis on farming is good as a criticism of the flailing, intrusive tentacles of liberalism and of societal conditions as a whole and as a defense of especially beleaguered workers..

..but it is well wide of the mark jaunting off on a tangent, when it is held up as an alternative model, a formula that should be studied or emulated by socialists and socialism.

But I am not holding it up as an alternative model. Were I, I would be wrong. I think you have always assumed that this was my intention.

Mike, Lenin declared the socialization of production complete over 100 years ago now. Regardless of if he was 100% right at the time, it is indisputably "true" now with whatever limited exceptions. I ask how that "socialization" relates to the socialization you are seeing in farm communities.

My understanding is sketchy, so keep that in mind and I will dig in so I can speak more coherently about this, but I see a divergence in Lenin's thoughts on farming when compared to those of Marx. Hence my crack "were the Bolsheviks city slickers?" I think that is worth studying and discussing, you hear it perhaps as revisionism or romanticism.

I ask how the socialization in farming overcomes capitalist relations without elimination of "ownership". You've replied that ownership is a very nebulous and ill-defined thing in farming, of which I have no doubt. But that is not the same thing as saying it does not exist. In the last it is the only thing that DOES exist.

You miss my point, or perhaps I am not being clear. The point of explaining how it is very nebulous and ill-defined is not to defend the status quo, but to show how easily ownership could be dispensed with in farming. I think it just might be possible that ownership would have been far easier to eliminate then the Soviets thought it would be - I say possible, don't take my head off - and that their tactics in the field were not effective because they brought an urban bias to the practical, strategic challenge. I don't think that is completely out of the range of possibilities. But this is a question on my part, not an answer.

Look, I am way over my head here. I am just tromping around in the field observing the birds and bringing my descriptions back to you brain boys to analyze for me.

[Pinko]

I'm sorry, but I don't see how generic platitudes achieve anything durable. You can pretend that once "classes" are destroyed, all will balance and no "classes" will result. Such pretense is as artificial as the magician's sleight-of-hand. Anyone who's ever done any form of labor meaningful to him- or herself knows that there are different levels of quality in the labor itself, and in the product of that labor. I have seen it in my own intellectual works, as well as my physical labors.

As far as I can tell, the human intellectual ability to distinguish levels of quality doesn't disappear merely because capitalism is destroyed. I'd love to hear someone explain to me otherwise. And I don't think that denigrating me as one thinking he's a prophet --as Kid tried in an earlier thread-- is any form of explanation as to how Marxism can deal with human qualities.

On edit and first things: agreement.

"You can pretend that once "classes" are destroyed, all will balance and no "classes" will result."

You are quite right. No commie will tell you he knows what happens after the abolition of classes (if that even ever happens). Communism is not about making suppositions of what the society that follows bourgeois relations will be like. Don't ever listen to anyone who purports to know.

Now, what you derisively call "generic platitudes" are dealt with straight away by Marx. To wit:

To all the different varieties of values in use there correspond as many different kinds of useful labour, classified according to the order, genus, species, and variety to which they belong in the social division of labour. This division of labour is a necessary condition for the production of commodities, but it does not follow, conversely, that the production of commodities is a necessary condition for the division of labour. In the primitive Indian community there is social division of labour, without production of commodities. Or, to take an example nearer home, in every factory the labour is divided according to a system, but this division is not brought about by the operatives mutually exchanging their individual products. Only such products can become commodities with regard to each other, as result from different kinds of labour, each kind being carried on independently and for the account of private individuals.

To resume, then: In the use value of each commodity there is contained useful labour, i.e., productive activity of a definite kind and exercised with a definite aim. Use values cannot confront each other as commodities, unless the useful labour embodied in them is qualitatively different in each of them. In a community, the produce of which in general takes the form of commodities, i.e., in a community of commodity producers, this qualitative difference between the useful forms of labour that are carried on independently by individual producers, each on their own account, develops into a complex system, a social division of labour.

Anyhow, whether the coat be worn by the tailor or by his customer, in either case it operates as a use value. Nor is the relation between the coat and the labour that produced it altered by the circumstance that tailoring may have become a special trade, an independent branch of the social division of labour. Wherever the want of clothing forced them to it, the human race made clothes for thousands of years, without a single man becoming a tailor. But coats and linen, like every other element of material wealth that is not the spontaneous produce of Nature, must invariably owe their existence to a special productive activity, exercised with a definite aim, an activity that appropriates particular nature-given materials to particular human wants. So far therefore as labour is a creator of use value, is useful labour, it is a necessary condition, independent of all forms of society, for the existence of the human race; it is an eternal nature-imposed necessity, without which there can be no material exchanges between man and Nature, and therefore no life.

The use values, coat, linen, &c., i.e., the bodies of commodities, are combinations of two elements – matter and labour. If we take away the useful labour expended upon them, a material substratum is always left, which is furnished by Nature without the help of man. The latter can work only as Nature does, that is by changing the form of matter.[13] Nay more, in this work of changing the form he is constantly helped by natural forces. We see, then, that labour is not the only source of material wealth, of use values produced by labour. As William Petty puts it, labour is its father and the earth its mother.

Let us now pass from the commodity considered as a use value to the value of commodities.

By our assumption, the coat is worth twice as much as the linen. But this is a mere quantitative difference, which for the present does not concern us. We bear in mind, however, that if the value of the coat is double that of 10 yds of linen, 20 yds of linen must have the same value as one coat. So far as they are values, the coat and the linen are things of a like substance, objective expressions of essentially identical labour. But tailoring and weaving are, qualitatively, different kinds of labour. There are, however, states of society in which one and the same man does tailoring and weaving alternately, in which case these two forms of labour are mere modifications of the labour of the same individual, and not special and fixed functions of different persons, just as the coat which our tailor makes one day, and the trousers which he makes another day, imply only a variation in the labour of one and the same individual. Moreover, we see at a glance that, in our capitalist society, a given portion of human labour is, in accordance with the varying demand, at one time supplied in the form of tailoring, at another in the form of weaving. This change may possibly not take place without friction, but take place it must.

Productive activity, if we leave out of sight its special form, viz., the useful character of the labour, is nothing but the expenditure of human labour power. Tailoring and weaving, though qualitatively different productive activities, are each a productive expenditure of human brains, nerves, and muscles, and in this sense are human labour. They are but two different modes of expending human labour power. Of course, this labour power, which remains the same under all its modifications, must have attained a certain pitch of development before it can be expended in a multiplicity of modes. But the value of a commodity represents human labour in the abstract, the expenditure of human labour in general. And just as in society, a general or a banker plays a great part, but mere man, on the other hand, a very shabby part,[14] so here with mere human labour. It is the expenditure of simple labour power, i.e., of the labour power which, on an average, apart from any special development, exists in the organism of every ordinary individual. Simple average labour, it is true, varies in character in different countries and at different times, but in a particular society it is given. Skilled labour counts only as simple labour intensified, or rather, as multiplied simple labour, a given quantity of skilled being considered equal to a greater quantity of simple labour. Experience shows that this reduction is constantly being made. A commodity may be the product of the most skilled labour, but its value, by equating it to the product of simple unskilled labour, represents a definite quantity of the latter labour alone.[15] The different proportions in which different s

orts of labour are reduced to unskilled labour as their standard, are established by a social process that goes on behind the backs of the producers, and, consequently, appear to be fixed by custom.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx...c1/ch01.htm#S2

You'd do well to click the link and slog though that entire section of the chapter in order that you get the full context rather than the sliver I have provided above.

Cheers -

[Two Americas]

Somewhere I read that capitalism comes last to agriculture (something Mike has as much said and obviously knows in his gut thanks to good old labor).

Yes.

Perhaps Mike sees "staying the same" as he does because he is reacting against capitalist encroachment. (Although I'll grant you it may be a little late for that since Mike probably also is a wage laborer...)

Exactly. The difference is that from the perspective of the farm, capitalism is an expression of city-slickerism, and is seen as an alien invader. The stubbornness about retaining ownership of their own land is resistance to the landlord. When settlers came here, they left places where the aristocracy owned all of the land and retained all hunting rights. It is deeply ingrained and passed down that the little guy having his 100 acres and his gun is the essence of resistance to tyranny. Capitalism - the banks, the food brokers, Wall Street - is seen as the latest assault on the peasants (farmers do think of themselves as peasants, and do not control much if any capital.) In some ways their thinking hasn't changed since the 18th century - city slickers and rich fucks come and go and take different forms.

This is not to idealize, or romanticize farming or to hold it up as a model. It is merely making observations. However, life WAS better before the capitalists showed up, and that doesn't mean advocating turning the clock back, nor romanticizing the good old days. The capitalists are showing up in places today and destroying people's communities and lives.

I can't find the source of the claim that capital comes last to the farm and will leave the farm last, but that seems intuitively obvious to me. This has to do with agriculture being the underpinning of literally everything else. The rise and fall of a capitalist epoch must rest its curve upon a foundation wider than either end's tail lest people be too busy trying to subsist for anything else to be going on.

Isn't it something we should discuss that cooperative communal communities have been common in agriculture? Remnants of that exist today in farming communities.

Over half of farms are under 100 acres. Almost sixty percent of farms do less than $ 10,000 a year in sales. Over 2/3 of farmers own their means of production.

Well the bank usually owns the land. 100 acres doesn't work anymore, so those folks have to work off farm to supplement their income.

Something to toss in here - it is very common of small farms that everyone including the owner makes the same wage - $15-20,000 a year, from the pickers to the owner. The last place I was at had 40 employees all making the same money.

The owner is wealthier because he is building equity in the land on paper, but there is no way to get that capital out without selling it and that means the farm dies. Many so, especially when the farmer dies and his kids inherit it. They cash it out and sell to developers. But what of the people who don't? Those who labor away at a low income because farming is what they want to do? Who don't see the land the way that most homeowners have been seeing their homes - as investments?

[Kid of the Black Hole]

thanks Mike, made me think. I have to think about how much I am projecting onto what you are saying and how much is actually implicit no matter how it gets spun. You're right that my opinion on it has been kind of one-track, although I am struggling to see how it could lead in any other direction

You're right that I've been to hasty to judge, lets talk about this a little more. Have to be fairly abstract though because I know dick about farming lol

PS I lived in Micanopy when I went to school at UF but thats like an hour from The Villages where I am

[Pinko]

I have an interest in the Ukraine/Kulak/Stalin narrative too - because I am fucking sick of capitalist propaganda maligning Stalin. If Americans weren't such vile, brainwashed hypocrits we'd also spend a lot of time beating the shit out of the legacy of Robespierre. When's the last time you heard anyone do so?

OK so --->

Lenin on ag, 1902:

We shall quote the “agrarian” section of this draft programme in full.

“With a view to eradicating the remnants of the old serf-owning system and for the purpose of facilitating the free development of the class struggle in the countryside, the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party will work for:

“1) abolition of land redemption and quit-rent payments, as well as of all services now imposed on the peasantry as a taxable social-estate;

“2) annulment of collective liability and of all laws restricting the peasant in the free disposal of his land;

“3) restitution to the people of all sums taken from them in the form, of land redemption and quit-rent payments; confiscation for this purpose of monasterial property and of the royal demesnes, and imposition of a special land tax on members of the big landed nobility who received land redemption loans, the revenue thus obtained to be credited to a special public fund for the cultural and charitable needs of the village communes;

“4) establishment of peasant committees

“a) for the restitution to the village communes (by expropriation, or, when the land has changed hands, by redemption, etc.) of the land cut off from the peasants when serfdom was abolished and now used by the land lords as a means of keeping the peasants in bondage;

“b) for the eradication of the remnants of the serf-owning system which still exist in the Urals, the Altai, the Western territory, and other regions of the country;

“5) empowerment of courts to reduce exorbitant rents and to declare null and void all contracts entailing bondage.”

The reader may perhaps wonder at the fact that the “agrarian programme” contains no demands whatever in favour of the agricultural wage-workers. On this score let us note that such demands have been included in the preceding section of the programme which contains the demands presented by our Party “to safeguard the working class from physical and moral degeneration, and also to raise its fighting capacity in the struggle for its emancipation.” The words we have underlined apply to all wage-workers, including those in agriculture, and all the 16 clauses of this section of the programme apply to the agricultural workers as well.

True, this combination of industrial and agricultural workers in one section, with the “agrarian” part of the programme limited to “peasant” demands, has the drawback that the demands in favour of the agricultural workers do not strike the eye, are not discernible at first glance. A superficial acquaintance with the programme may even create the entirely wrong impression that we have deliberately toned down the demands in favour of the agricultural wage-workers. Needless to say, this impression would be quite false, for the drawback in question is at bottom of a purely external character. It can be easily obviated by closer acquaintance with the programme itself and the commentaries on it (and it goes without saying that our Party programme will “go to the people” only together with printed commentaries, and, what is far more important, with spoken commentaries as well). Should some group wish to make a special appeal to the agricultural workers, it need only select from all the demands in favour of the workers those particular demands that are most important to farm labourers, hands hired by the day, etc., and set them out in a separate pamphlet, leaflet, or in speeches.

From the standpoint of principle, the only correct way to edit the programme sections under analysis is one that will unite all demands in favour of the wage-workers in all branches of the national economy and will distinctly place in a special section demands in favour of the “peas ants,” because the fundamental criterion of what we can and must demand in the former and latter cases is absolutely different. In the draft, the fundamental difference between the two sections of the programme under review is expressed in the preamble to each section.

For wage-workers we demand such reforms as would “safeguard them from physical and moral degeneration and raise their fighting capacity”; for the peasants, how ever, we seek only such changes as would help “to eradicate the remnants of the old serf-owning system and facilitate the free development of the class struggle in the countryside.” Hence it follows that our demands in favour of the peasants are far more restricted, that their terms are much more moderate and presented in a smaller frame-work. With regard to the wage-workers, we undertake to defend their interests as a class in present-day society; we do this because we consider their class movement the only truly revolutionary movement (cf. the words in the theoretical part of the programme on the relation of the working class to other classes) and strive to organise this particular movement, to direct it, and bring the light of socialist consciousness into it. As regards the peasantry, however, we do not by any means undertake to defend its interests as a class of small landowners and farmers in present-day society. Nothing of the kind. “The emancipation of the workers must be the act of the working class itself,” and for this reason Social-Democracy represents—directly and wholly—the interests of the proletariat alone, and seeks indissoluble organic unity with its class movement alone. All the other classes of present-day society stand for the preservation of the foundations of the existing economic system, and that is why Social-Democracy can undertake to defend the interests of those classes only under certain circumstances and on concrete and strictly defined conditions. For instance, in its struggle against the bourgeoisie, the class of small producers, including the small farmers, is a reactionary class, and therefore “trying to save the peasantry by protecting small-scale farming and small holdings from the onslaught of capitalism would be a useless retarding of social development; it would mean deceiving the peasantry with illusions of the possibility of prosperity even under capitalism; it would mean disuniting the labouring classes and creating a privileged position for the minority at the expense of the majority” (Iskra, No. 3).[See present edition, Vol. 4, pp. 422-23.—Ed.] That is why in our draft programme the inclusion of the “peasant” demands hinges on two highly circumscribed conditions. We make the legitimacy of “peasant demands” in a Social-Democratic programme dependent, firstly, on the condition that they lead to the eradication of remnants of the serf-owning system, and, secondly, that they facilitate the free development of the class struggle in the countryside.

Let us dwell in greater detail on each of these conditions, which have already been briefly outlined in No. 3 of Iskra.

The “remnants of the old serf-owning system” are still extremely numerous in our countryside. This is a generally known fact. Labour-rent and bondage, the peasants’ inequality as a social-estate and as citizens, their subjection to the privileged landowners, who still have the right to flog them, and their degrading living conditions, which virtually turn the peasants into barbarians—all this is not an exception, but the rule in the Russian countryside, and in the final analysis this is all a direct survival of the serf-owning system. In those instances and relationships where this system still prevails, and insofar as it still prevails, its enemy is the peasantry as a whole. As opposed to serf-ownership, to the feu

dal-minded landlords, and the state that serves them, the peasantry still stands as a class, a class not of capitalist but of serf-owning society, i.e., as an estate-class.[1] Inasmuch as this class antagonism between the “peasantry” and the privileged landowners, so characteristic of serf-owning society, still survives in our countryside, insomuch a working-class party must undoubtedly be on the side of the “peasantry,” support its struggle and urge it on to fight against all remnants of serf-ownership.

We put the word “peasantry” in quotation marks in order to emphasise the existence in this case of an absolutely indubitable contradiction: in present-day society the peasantry of course no longer constitutes an integral class. But whoever is perplexed by this contradiction forgets that this is not a contradiction in exposition, in a doctrine, but a contradiction in life itself. This is not an invented, but a living and dialectical contradiction. Inasmuch as in our countryside serf-owning society is being eliminated by “present-day” (bourgeois) society, insomuch the peasantry ceases to be a class and becomes divided into the rural proletariat and the rural bourgeoisie (big, middle, petty, and very small). Inasmuch as serf-owning relationships still exist, insomuch the “peasantry” still continues to be a class, i.e., we repeat, a class of serf-owning society rather than of bourgeois society. This “inasmuch—insomuch” exists in real life in the form of an extremely complex web of serf-owning and bourgeois relationships in the Russian countryside today. To use Marx’s terminology, labour rent, rent in kind, money rent, and capitalist rent are all most fantastically interlinked in our country. We lay special emphasis on this fact, which has been established by all economic investigations in Russia, because it necessarily and inevitably constitutes a source of that complexity, confusion, or, if you will, artificialness, of some of our “agrarian” demands, which at first glance so greatly puzzles many people. Whoever limits his objections to general dissatisfaction with the complexity and “artfulness” of the proposed solutions forgets that there can be no simple solution of such tangled problems. It is our duty to fight against all remnants of serf-owning relationships— that is beyond doubt to a Social-Democrat—and since these relationships are most intricately interwoven with bourgeois relationships,we are obliged to penetrate into the very core, so to say, of this confusion, undeterred by the complexity of the task. There could be only one “simple” solution of this task: to keep aloof, pass it by, and leave it to the “spontaneous element” to clear up this mess. But this “simplicity,” favoured by all and sundry bourgeois and “economist” admirers of spontaneity, is unworthy of a Social-Democrat. The party of the proletariat must not only support but must also urge on the peasantry in its struggle against all the remnants of the serf-owning system. To urge the peasantry on, it must not confine itself to wishful thinking; it must lay down a definite revolutionary directive, and be able to help in finding the bearings in the maze of agrarian relationships.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/leni...m#v06zz99h-111

Lenin on Kulaks, 1918:

In launching their attack on peaceful Russia the British and Japanese capitalist robbers are also counting on alliance with the internal enemy of the Soviet government. We all know who that internal enemy is. It is the capitalists, the landowners, the kulaks, and their offspring, who hate the government of the workers and working peasants-the peasants who do not suck the blood of their fellow-villagers.

A wave of kulak revolts is sweeping across Russia. The kulak hates the Soviet government like poison and is prepared to strangle and massacre hundreds of thousands of workers. We know very well that if the kulaks were to gain the upper hand they would ruthlessly slaughter hundreds of thousands of workers, in alliance with the landowners and capitalists, restore back-breaking conditions for the workers, abolish the eight-hour day and hand back the mills and factories to the capitalists.

That was the case in all earlier European revolutions when, as a result of the weakness of the workers, the kulaks succeeded in turning back from a republic to a monarchy, from a working people’s government to the despotism of the exploiters, the rich and the parasites. This happened before our very eyes in Latvia, Finland, the Ukraine and Georgia. Everywhere the avaricious, bloated and bestial kulaks joined hands with the landowners and capitalists against the workers and against the poor generally. Everywhere the kulaks wreaked their vengeance on the working class with incredible ferocity. Everywhere they joined hands with the foreign capitalists against the workers of their own country. That is the way the Cadets, the Right Socialist-Revolutionaries and the Mensheviks have been acting: we have only to remember their exploits in “Czechoslovakia”.[22] That is the way the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries, in their crass stupidity and spinelessness, acted too when they revolted in Moscow, thus assisting the whiteguards in Yaroslavi and the Czechs and the Whites in Kazan. No wonder these Left Socialist-Revolutionaries were praised by Kerensky and his friends, the French imperialists.

There is no doubt about it. The kulaks are rabid foes of the Soviet government. Either the kulaks massacre vast numbers of workers, or the workers ruthlessly suppress the revolts of the predatory kulak minority of the people against the working people’s government. There can be no middle course. Peace is out of the question: even if they have quarrelled, the kulak can easily come to terms with the landowner, the tsar and the priest, but with the working class never.

That is why we call the fight against the kulaks the last, decisive fight. That does not mean there may not be many more kulak revolts, or that there may not be many more attacks on the Soviet government by foreign capitalism. The words, the last fight, imply that the last and most numerous of the exploiting classes has revolted against us in our country.

The kulaks are the most brutal, callous and savage exploiters, who in the history of other countries have time and again restored the power of the landowners, tsars, priests and capitalists. The kulaks are more numerous than the landowners and capitalists. Nevertheless, they are a minority.

Let us take it that there are about fifteen million peasant families in Russia, taking Russia as she was before the robbers deprived her of the Ukraine and other territories. Of these fifteen million, probably ten million are poor peasants who live by selling their labour power, or who are in bondage to the rich, or who lack grain surpluses and have been most impoverished by the burdens of war. About three million must be regarded as middle peasants, while barely two million consist of kulaks, rich peasants, grain profiteers. These bloodsuckers have grown rich on the want suffered by the people in the war; they have raked in thousands and hundreds of thousands of rubles by pushing up the price of grain and other products. These spiders have grown fat at the expense of the peasants ruined by the war, at the expense of the starving workers. These leeches have sucked the blood of the working people and grown richer as the workers in the cities and factories starved. These vampires have been gathering the landed estates into their hands; they continue to enslave the poor peasants.

Ruthless war on the kulaks! Death to them! Hatred and contempt for the parties which defend them-the Right Socialist-Revolutionaries, the Mensheviks, and today's Left Socialist-Revolutionaries! The workers must crush the revolts of the kulaks with an iron hand, the kulaks who are forming an alliance with the foreign capitalists against the working people of their own country.

The kulaks take advantage of the ignorance, the disunity

and isolation of the poor peasants. They incite them against the workers. Sometimes they bribe them while permitting them to "make a bit", a hundred rubles or so, by profiteering in grain (at the same time robbing the poor peasants of many thousands of rubles). The kulaks try to win the support of the middle peasants, and they sometimes succeed.

But there is no reason why the working class should quarrel with the middle peasant. The workers cannot come to terms with the kulak, but they may seek, and are seeking, an agreement with the middle peasant. The workers' government, the Bolshevik government, has proved that in deed.

We proved it by passing the law on the "socialisation of land" and strictly carrying it into effect. That law contains numerous concessions to the interests and views of the middle peasant.

We proved it (the other day) by trebling grain prices"; for we fully realise that the earnings of the middle peasant are often disproportionate to present-day prices for manufactured goods and must be raised.

Every class-conscious worker will explain this to the middle peasant and will patiently, persistently, and repeatedly point out to him that socialism is infinitely more beneficial for him than a government of the tsars, landowners and capitalists.

The workers' government has never wronged and never will wrong the middle peasant. But the government of the tsars, landowners, capitalists and kulaks not only always wronged the middle peasant, but stifled, plundered, and ruined him outright. And this is true of all countries without exception, Russia included.

The class-conscious worker’s programme is the closest alliance and complete unity with the poor peasants; concessions to and agreement with the middle peasants; ruthless suppression of the kulaks, those bloodsuckers, vampires, plunderers of the people and profiteers, who batten on famine. That is the policy of the working class.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/leni...18/aug/x01.htm

[Two Americas]

Thanks Rusty. We need Marx here on this, too.

[Kid of the Black Hole]

Thanks Rusty. We need Marx here on this, too.

Mike I am wanting to quote an entire section of Vol III of Capital but I am trying to pare it down so there is an off chance people might read what is posted.

However to get started I will just throw the whole thing out there and if anyone sees something they want to respond to, go for it. It is the last section of Chapter 47 of Vol III

In this section, Marx has already developed his theory of ground rent, and now takes a moment to consider a different scenario. The only scenario he has considered thus far is that of England where there are owners and wage workers only in the countryside. Here he considers a peasantry of sorts, but one that is under the sway of money capital and merchants.

It is definitely not the final word of how Marx weighed in on the issue of the peasantry but it is as good a jumping off point as I think you're going to find, Mike.

[Kid of the Black Hole]

V. MÉTAYAGE AND PEASANT PROPRIETORSHIP OF LAND PARCELS

We have now arrived at the end of our elaboration of ground-rent.

In all these forms of ground-rent, whether labour rent, rent in kind, or money-rent (as merely a changed form of rent in kind), the one paying rent is always supposed to be the actual cultivator and possessor of the land, whose unpaid surplus-labour passes directly into the hands of the landlord. Even in the last form, money-rent in so far as it is "pure," i.e., merely a changed form of rent in kind — this is not only possible, but actually takes place.

As a transitory form from the original form of rent to capitalist rent, we may consider the metayer system, or share-cropping, under which the manager (farmer) furnishes labour (his own or another’s), and also a portion of working capital, and the landlord furnishes, aside from land, another portion of working capital (e.g., cattle), and the product is divided between tenant and landlord in definite proportions which vary from country to country. On the one hand, the farmer here lacks sufficient capital required for complete capitalist management. On the other hand, the share here appropriated by the landlord does not bear the pure form of rent. It may actually include interest on the capital advanced by him and an excess rent. It may also absorb practically the entire surplus-labour of the farmer, or leave him a greater or smaller portion of this surplus-labour. But, essentially, rent no longer appears here as the normal form of surplus-value in general. On the one hand, the sharecropper, whether he employs his own or another’s labour, is to lay claim to a portion of the product not in his capacity as labourer, but as possessor of part of the instruments of labour, as his own capitalist. On the other hand, the landlord claims his share not exclusively on the basis of his land-ownership, but also as lender of capital.[44a]

A survival of the old communal ownership of land, which had endured after the transition to independent peasant farming, e.g., in Poland and Rumania, served there as a subterfuge for effecting a transition to the lower forms of ground-rent. A portion of the land belongs to the individual peasant and is tilled independently by him. Another portion is tilled in common and creates a surplus-product, which serves partly to cover community expenses, partly as a reserve in cases of crop failure, etc. These last two parts of the surplus-product, and ultimately the entire surplus-product including the land upon which it has been grown, are more and more usurped by state officials and private individuals, and thus the originally free peasant proprietors, whose obligation to till this land in common is maintained, are transformed into vassals subject either to corvée-labour or rent in kind; while the usurpers of common land are transformed into owners, not only of the usurped common lands, but even the very lands of the peasants themselves.

We need not further investigate slave economy proper (which likewise passes through a metamorphosis from the patriarchal system mainly for home use to the plantation system for the world-market) nor the management of estates under which the landlords themselves are independent cultivators, possessing all instruments of production, and exploiting the labour of free or unfree bondsmen, who are paid either in kind or money. Landlord and owner of the instruments of production, and thus the direct exploiter of labourers included among these elements of production, are in this case one and the same person. Rent and profit likewise coincide then, there occurring no separation of the different forms of surplus-value. The entire surplus-labour of the labourers, which is manifested here in the surplus-product, is extracted from them directly by the owner of all instruments of production, to which belong the land and, under the original form of slavery, the immediate producers themselves. Where the capitalist outlook prevails, as on American plantations, this entire surplus-value is regarded as profit; where neither the capitalist mode of production itself exists, nor the corresponding outlook has been transferred from capitalist countries, it appears as rent. At any rate, this form presents no difficulties. The income of the landlord, whatever it may be called, the available surplus-product appropriated by him, is here the normal and prevailing form, whereby the entire unpaid surplus-labour is directly appropriated, and landed property forms the basis of such appropriation.

Further, proprietorship of land parcels. The peasant here is simultaneously the free owner of his land, which appears as his principal instrument of production, the indispensable field of employment for his labour and his capital. No lease money is paid under this form. Rent, therefore, does not appear as a separate form of surplus-value, although in countries in which otherwise the capitalist mode of production is developed, it appears as a surplus-profit compared with other lines of production; but as surplus-profit which, like all proceeds of his labour in general, accrues to the peasant.

This form of landed property presupposes, as in the earlier older forms, that the rural population greatly predominates numerically over the town population, so that, even if the capitalist mode of production otherwise prevails, it is but relatively little developed, and thus also in the other lines of production the concentration of capital is restricted to narrow limits and a fragmentation of capital predominates. In the nature of things, the greater portion of agricultural produce must be consumed as direct means of subsistence by the producers themselves, the peasants, and only the excess above that will find its way as commodities into urban commerce. No matter how the average market-price of agricultural products may here be regulated, differential rent, an excess portion of commodity-prices from superior or more favourably located land, must evidently exist here much as under the capitalist mode of production. This differential rent exists, even where this form appears under social conditions, under which no general market-price has as yet been developed; it appears then in the excess surplus-product. Only then it flows into the pockets of the peasant whose labour is realised under more favourable natural conditions. The assumption here is generally to be made that no absolute rent exists, i.e., that the worst soil does not pay any rent — precisely under this form where the price of land enters as a factor in the peasant’s actual cost of production whether because in the course of this form’s further development either the price of land has been computed at a certain money-value, in dividing up an inheritance, or, during the constant change in ownership of an entire estate, or of its component parts, the land has been bought by the cultivator himself, largely by raising money on mortgage; and, therefore, where the price of land, representing nothing more than capitalised rent, is a factor assumed in advance, and where rent thus seems to exist independently of any differentiation in fertility and location of the land. For, absolute rent presupposes either realised excess in product value above its price of production, or a monopoly price exceeding the value of the product. But since agriculture here is carried on largely as cultivation for direct subsistence, and the land exists as an indispensable field of employment for the labour and capital of the majority of the population, the regulating market-price of the product will reach its value only under extraordinary circumstances. But this value will, generally, be higher than its price of production owing to the preponderant element of living labour, although this excess of value over price of production will in turn be limited by the low composition even of non-agricultural capit

al in countries with an economy composed predominantly of land parcels. For the peasant owning a parcel, the limit of exploitation is not set by the average profit of capital, in so far as he is a small capitalist; nor, on the other hand, by the necessity of rent, in so far as he is a landowner. The absolute limit for him as a small capitalist is no more than the wages he pays to himself, after deducting his actual costs. So long as the price of the product covers these wages, he will cultivate his land, and often at wages down to a physical minimum. As for his capacity as land proprietor, the barrier of ownership is eliminated for him, since it can make itself felt only vis-à-vis a capital (including labour) separated from land-ownership, by erecting an obstacle to the investment of capital. It is true, to be sure, that interest on the price of land — which generally has to be paid to still another individual, the mortgage creditor — is a barrier. But this interest can be paid precisely out of that portion of surplus-labour which would constitute profit under capitalist conditions. The rent anticipated in the price of land and in the interest paid for it can therefore be nothing but a portion of the peasant’s capitalised surplus-labour over and above the labour indispensable for his subsistence, without this surplus-labour being realised in a part of the commodity-value equal to the entire average profit, and still less in an excess above the surplus-labour realised in the average profit, i.e., in a surplus-profit. The rent may be a deduction from the average profit, or even the only portion of it which is realised. For the peasant parcel holder to cultivate his land, or to buy land for cultivation, it is therefore not necessary, as under the normal capitalist mode of production, that the market-price of the agricultural products rise high enough to afford him the average profit, and still less a fixed excess above this average profit in the form of rent. It is not necessary, therefore, that the market-price rise, either up to the value or the price of production of his product. This is one of the reasons why grain prices are lower in countries with predominant small peasant land proprietorship than in countries with a capitalist mode of production. One portion of the surplus-labour of the peasants, who work under the least favourable conditions, is bestowed gratis upon society and does not at all enter into the regulation of price of production or into the creation of value in general. This lower price is consequently a result of the producers’ poverty and by no means of their labour productivity.

This form of free self-managing peasant proprietorship of land parcels as the prevailing, normal form constitutes, on the one hand, the economic foundation of society during the best periods of classical antiquity, and on the other hand, it is found among modern nations as one of the forms arising from the dissolution of feudal land ownership. Thus, the yeomanry in England, the peasantry in Sweden, the French and West German peasants. We do not include colonies here, since the independent peasant there develops under different conditions.

The free ownership of the self-managing peasant is evidently the most normal form of landed property for small-scale operation, i.e., for a mode of production, in which possession of the land is a prerequisite for the labourer’s ownership of the product of his own labour, and in which the cultivator, be he free owner or vassal, always must produce his own means of subsistence independently, as an isolated labourer with his family. Ownership of the land is as necessary for full development of this mode of production as ownership of tools is for free development of handicraft production. Here is the basis for the development of personal independence. It is a necessary transitional stage for the development of agriculture itself. The causes which bring about its downfall show its limitations. These are: Destruction of rural domestic industry, which forms its normal supplement as a result of the development of large-scale industry; a gradual impoverishment and exhaustion of the soil subjected to this cultivation; usurpation by big landowners of the common lands, which constitute the second supplement of the management of land parcels everywhere and which alone enable it to raise cattle; competition, either of the plantation system or large-scale capitalist agriculture. Improvements in agriculture, which on the one hand cause a fall in agricultural prices and, on the other, require greater outlays and more extensive material conditions of production, also contribute towards this, as in England during the first half of the 18th century.

Proprietorship of land parcels by its very nature excludes the development of social productive forces of labour, social forms of labour, social concentration of capital, large-scale cattle-raising, and the progressive application of science.

Usury and a taxation system must impoverish it everywhere. The expenditure of capital in the price of the land withdraws this capital from cultivation. An infinite fragmentation of means of production, and isolation of the producers themselves. Monstrous waste of human energy. Progressive deterioration of conditions of production and increased prices of means of production — an inevitable law of proprietorship of parcels. Calamity of seasonal abundance for this mode of production.[45]

One of the specific evils of small-scale agriculture where it is combined with free land-ownership arises from the cultivator’s investing capital in the purchase of land. (The same applies also to the transitory form, in which the big landowner invests capital, first, to buy land, and second, to manage it as his own tenant farmer.) Owing to the changeable nature which the land here assumes as a mere commodity, the changes of ownership increase,[46] so that the land, from the peasant’s viewpoint, enters anew as an investment of capital with each successive generation and division of estates, i.e., it becomes land purchased by him. The price of land here forms a weighty element of the individual unproductive costs of production or cost-price of the product for the individual producer.

The price of land is nothing but capitalised and therefore anticipated rent. If capitalist methods are employed by agriculture, so that the landlord receives only rent, and the farmer pays nothing for land except this annual rent, then it is evident that the capital invested by the landowner himself in purchasing the land constitutes indeed an interest-bearing investment of capital for him, but has absolutely nothing to do with capital invested in agriculture itself. It forms neither a part of the fixed, nor of the circulating, capital employed here;[47] it merely secures for the buyer a claim to receive annual rent, but has absolutely nothing to do with the production of the rent itself. The buyer of land just pays his capital out to the one who sells the land, and the seller in return relinquishes his ownership of the land. Thus this capital no longer exists as the capital of the purchaser; he no longer has it; therefore it does not belong to the capital which he can invest in any way in the land itself. Whether he bought the land dear or cheap, or whether he received it for nothing, alters nothing in the capital invested by the farmer in his establishment, and changes nothing in the rent, but merely alters the question whether it appears to him as interest or not, or as higher or lower interest respectively.

Take, for instance, the slave economy. The price paid for a slave is nothing but the anticipated and capitalised surplus-value or profit to be wrung out of the slave. But the capital paid for the purchase of a slave does not belong to the capital by means of which profit, surplus-labour, is extracted from him. On the contrary. It is capital which the slave-holder has parted with, it is a deduction from the capital which be has available for actual production. It has ceased to exist for him, just as ca

pital invested in purchasing land has ceased to exist for agriculture. The best proof of this is that it does not reappear for the slave-holder or the landowner except when he, in turn, sells his slaves or land. But then the same situation prevails for the buyer. The fact that he has bought the slave does not enable him to exploit the slave without further ado. He is only able to do so when he invests some additional capital in the slave economy itself.

The same capital does not exist twice, once in the hands of the seller, and a second time in the hands of the buyer of the land. It passes from the hands of the buyer to those of the seller, and there the matter ends. The buyer now no longer has capital, but in its stead a piece of land. The circumstance that the rent produced by a real investment of capital in this land is calculated by the new landowner as interest on capital which he has not invested in the land, but given away to acquire the land, does not in the least alter the economic nature of the land factor, any more than the circumstance that someone has paid £1,000 for 3% consols has anything to do with the capital out of whose revenue the interest on the national debt is paid.

In fact, the money expended in purchasing land, like that in purchasing government bonds, is merely capital in itself, just as any value sum is capital in itself, potential capital, on the basis of the capitalist mode of production. What is paid for land, like that for government bonds or any other purchased commodity, is a sum of money. This is capital in itself, because it can be converted into capital. It depends upon the use put to it by the seller whether the money obtained by him is really transformed into capital or not. For the buyer, it can never again function as such, no more than any other money which he has definitely paid out. It figures in his accounts as interest-bearing capital, because he considers the income, received as rent from the land or as interest on state indebtedness, as interest on the money which the purchase of the claim to this revenue has cost him. He can only realise it as capital through resale. But then another, the new buyer, enters the same relationship maintained by the former, and the money thus expended cannot be transformed into actual capital for the expender through any change of hands.

In the case of small landed property the illusion is fostered still more that land itself possesses value and thus enters as capital into the price of production of the product, much as machines or raw materials. But we have seen that rent, and therefore capitalised rent, the price of land, can enter as a determining factor into the price of agricultural products in only two cases. First, when as a consequence of the composition of agricultural capital — a capital which has nothing to do with the capital invested in purchasing land — the value of the products of the soil is higher than their price of production, and market conditions enable the landlord to realise this difference. Second, when there is a monopoly price. And both are least of all the case under the management of land parcels and small land-ownership because precisely here production to a large extent satisfies the producers’ own wants and is carried on independently of regulation by the average rate of profit. Even where cultivation of land parcels is conducted upon leased land, the lease money comprises, far more so than under any other conditions, a portion of the profit and even a deduction from wages; this money is then only a nominal rent, not rent as an independent category as opposed to wages and profit.

The expenditure of money-capital for the purchase of land, then, is not an investment of agricultural capital. It is a decrease pro tanto in the capital which small peasants can employ in their own sphere of production. It reduces pro tanto the size of their means of production and thereby narrows the economic basis of reproduction. It subjects the small peasant to the money-lender, since credit proper occurs but rarely in this sphere in general. It is a hindrance to agriculture, even where such purchase takes place in the case of large estates. It contradicts in fact the capitalist mode of production, which is on the whole indifferent to whether the landowner is in debt, no matter whether he has inherited or purchased his estate. The nature of management of the leased estate itself is not altered whether the landowner pockets the rent himself or whether he must pay it out to the holder of his mortgage.

We have seen that, in the case of a given ground-rent, the price of land is regulated by the interest rate. If the rate is low, then the price of land is high, and vice versa. Normally, then, a high price of land and a low interest rate should go hand in hand, so that if the peasant paid a high price for the land in consequence of a low interest rate, the same low rate of interest should also secure his working capital for him on easy credit terms. But in reality, things turn out differently when peasant proprietorship of land parcels is the prevailing form. In the first place, the general laws of credit are not adapted to the farmer, since these laws presuppose a capitalist as the producer. Secondly, where proprietorship of land parcels predominates — we are not referring to colonies here — and the small peasant constitutes the backbone of the nation, the formation of capital, i.e., social reproduction, is relatively weak, and still weaker is the formation of loanable money-capital, in the sense previously elaborated. This presupposes the concentration and existence of a class of idle rich capitalists (Massie). [ [Massie] An Essay on the Governing Causes of the Natural Rate of Interest, London, 1750, pp 23-24. — Ed] Thirdly, here where the ownership of the land is a necessary condition for the existence of most producers, and an indispensable field of investment for their capital, the price of land is raised independently of the interest rate, and often in inverse ratio to it, through the preponderance of the demand for landed property over its supply. Land sold in parcels brings a far higher price in such a case than when sold in large tracts, because here the number of small buyers is large and that of large buyers is small (Bandes Noires, [Associations of profiteers. — Ed.] Rubichon; Newman [Newman, Lectures on Political Economy, London, 1851, pp. 180-81. — Ed.]). For all these reasons, the price of land rises here with a relatively high rate of interest. The relatively low interest, which the peasant derives here from the outlay of capital for the purchase of land (Mounier), corresponds here, on the other side, to the high usurious interest rate which he himself has to pay to his mortgage creditors. The Irish system bears out the same thing, only in another form.

The price of land, this element foreign to production in itself, may therefore rise here to such a point that it makes production impossible (Dombasle).

The fact that the price of land plays such a role, that purchase and sale, the circulation of land as a commodity, develops to this degree, is practically a result of the development of the capitalist mode of production in so far as a commodity is here the general form of all products and all instruments of production. On the other hand, this development takes place only where the capitalist mode of production has a limited development and does not unfold all of its peculiarities, because this rests precisely upon the fact that agriculture is no longer, or not yet, subject to the capitalist mode of production, but rather to one handed down from extinct forms of society. The disadvantages of the capitalist mode of production, with its dependence of the producer upon the money-price of his product, coincide here therefore with the disadvantages occasioned by the imperfect development of the capitalist mode of production. The peasant turns merchant and industrialist without the conditions enabling him to produce his products as commodities.

The conflict betw

een the price of land as an element in the producers’ cost-price and no element in the price of production (even though the rent enters as a determining factor into the price of the agricultural product, the capitalised rent, which is advanced for 20 years or more, by no means enters as a determinant) is but one of the forms manifesting the general contradiction between private land-ownership and a rational agriculture, the normal social utilisation of the soil. But on the other hand, private land ownership, and thereby expropriation of the direct producers from the land — private land-ownership by the one, which implies lack of ownership by others — is the basis of the capitalist mode of production.

Here, in small-scale agriculture, the price of land, a form and result of private land-ownership, appears as a barrier to production itself. In large-scale agriculture, and large estates operating on a capitalist basis, ownership likewise acts as a barrier, because it limits the tenant farmer in his productive investment of capital, which in the final analysis benefits not him, but the landlord. In both forms, exploitation and squandering of the vitality of the soil (apart from making exploitation dependent upon the accidental and unequal circumstances of individual producers rather than the attained level of social development) takes the place of conscious rational cultivation of the soil as eternal communal property, an inalienable condition for the existence and reproduction of a chain of successive generations of the human race. In the case of small property, this results from the lack of means and knowledge of applying the social labour productivity. In the case of large property, it results from the exploitation of such means for the most rapid enrichment of farmer and proprietor. In the case of both through dependence on the market-price.

All critique of small landed property resolves itself in the final analysis into a criticism of private ownership as a barrier and hindrance to agriculture. And similarly all counter-criticism of large landed property. In either case, of course, we leave aside all secondary political considerations. This barrier and hindrance, which are erected by all private landed property vis-à-vis agricultural production and the rational cultivation, maintenance and improvement of the soil itself, develop on both sides merely in different forms, and in wrangling over the specific forms of this evil its ultimate cause is forgotten.

Small landed property presupposes that the overwhelming majority of the population is rural, and that not social, but isolated labour predominates; and that, therefore, under such conditions wealth and development of reproduction, both of its material and spiritual prerequisites, are out of the question, and thereby also the prerequisites for rational cultivation. On the other hand, large landed property reduces the agricultural population to a constantly falling minimum, and confronts it with a constantly growing industrial population crowded together in large cities. It thereby creates conditions which cause an irreparable break in the coherence of social interchange prescribed by the natural laws of life. As a result, the vitality of the soil is squandered, and this prodigality is carried by commerce far beyond the borders of a particular state (Liebig). [ Liebig, Die Chemie in ihrer Anwendung auf Agricultur und Physiologie, Braunschweig, 1862. — Ed.]

While small landed property creates a class of barbarians standing halfway outside of society, a class combining all the crudeness of primitive forms of society with the anguish and misery of civilised countries, large landed property undermines labour-power in the last region, where its prime energy seeks refuge and stores up its strength as a reserve fund for the regeneration of the vital force of nations — on the land itself. Large-scale industry and large-scale mechanised agriculture work together. If originally distinguished by the fact that the former lays waste and destroys principally labour-power, hence the natural force of human beings, whereas the latter more directly exhausts the natural vitality of the soil, they join hands in the further course of development in that the industrial system in the countryside also enervates the labourers, and industry and commerce on their part supply agriculture with the means for exhausting the soil.

[Kid of the Black Hole]

Incidentally, here is what Engels said in the Preface to Volume III regarding the Part on Ground Rents:

In the seventies Marx engaged in entirely new special studies for this part on ground-rent. For years he had studied the Russian originals of statistical reports inevitable after the "reform" of 1861 in Russia and other publications on landownership, had taken extracts from these originals, placed at his disposal in admirably complete form by his Russian friends, and had intended to use them for a new version of this part. Owing to the variety of forms both of landownership and of exploitation of agricultural producers in Russia, this country was to play the same role in the part dealing with ground-rent that England played in Book I in connection with industrial wage-labour. He was unfortunately denied the opportunity of carrying out this plan.

That would've been very interesting if he'd been able to completed it

PS Mike, I am giving you the "good" stuff first because there is alot of stuff from Marx that you are not going to like very much lol

[Two Americas]

PS Mike, I am giving you the "good" stuff first because there is alot of stuff from Marx that you are not going to like very much lol

Naw don't assume that. It has been a while since I read Marx talking about agriculture, but I don't remember "not liking" anything he said.

[Kid of the Black Hole]

Don't really want to double post but I have a question for Rust-acular. Its mainly in the interest of keeping the conversation civil which invoking Lenin right off the bat is the wrong way to go about.

What do you think about Kautsky's The Agrarian Question? (1889). Did it follow Marx? Did it achieve its goal of answering Bernstein and cohorts?

I cannot find it on the web..I think that Marx2Mao might have it but I can't find the file and all I can otherwise find is in Spanish or German

But here is Lenin's book review which is a start:

Karl Kautsky. Die Agrarfrage. Eine Uebersicht über die Tendenzen der modernen Landwirtschalt und die Agrarpolitik u.s.w.[1] Stuttgart, Dietz, 1899.

Kautsky’s book is the most important event in present-day economic literature since the third volume of Capital. Until now Marxism has lacked a systematic study of capitalism in agriculture. Kautsky has filled this gap with “The Development of Agriculture in Capitalist Society,” the first part (pp. 1-300) of his voluminous (450-page) book. He justly remarks in his preface that an “overwhelming” mass of statistical and descriptive economic material on the question of agricultural capitalism has been accumulated and that there is an urgent need to reveal the “basic tendencies of economic evolution in this branch of the economy in order to demonstrate the varied phenomena of agricultural capitalism as “partial manifestations of one common [integral] process” (eines Gesammtprozesses). It is true that agricultural forms and the relations among the agricultural population in contemporary society are marked by such tremendous variety that there is nothing easier than to seize upon a whole mass of facts and pointers taken from any inquiry that will “confirm” the views of the given writer. This is precisely the method used in a large number of arguments by our Narodnik press which tries to prove the viability of petty peasant economy or even its superiority over large-scale production in agriculture. A distinguishing feature of all these arguments is that they isolate individual phenomena, cite individual cases, and do not even make an attempt to connect them with the general picture of the whole agrarian structure of capitalist countries in general and with the basic tendencies of the entire present-day evolution of capitalist farming. Kautsky does not make this usual mistake. He has been studying the problem of capitalism in agriculture for over twenty years and is in possession of very extensive material; in particular, Kautsky bases his inquiry on the data of the latest agricultural censuses and questionnaires in England, America, France (1892), and Germany (1895). He never loses his way amidst piles of facts and never loses sight of the connection between the tiniest phenomenon and the general structure of capitalist farming and the general evolution of capitalism.

Kautsky does not confine himself to anyone particular question, e.g., the relations between large-scale and small-scale production in agriculture, but deals with the general question of whether or not capital is bringing agriculture under its domination, whether it is changing forms of production and forms of ownership in agriculture and how this process is taking place. Kautsky gives every recognition to the important role played by pre-capitalist and non-capitalist forms of agriculture in modern society and to the necessity of examining the relationship of these forms to the purely capitalist forms; he begins his investigation with an extremely brilliant and precise characterisation of the patriarchal peasant economy and of agriculture in the feudal epoch. Having thus established the starting-points for the development of capitalism in agriculture, he proceeds to characterise “modern agriculture.” The description is given first of all from the technical standpoint (the crop rotation system, division of labour, machinery, fertilisers, bacteriology), and the reader is given a splendid picture of the great revolution capitalism has wrought in the course of a few decades by making agriculture a science instead of a routine craft. Further comes the investigation of “the capitalist character of modern agriculture"—a brief and popularly written, but extremely precise and talented, exposition of Marx’s theory of profit and rent. Kautsky shows that the tenant farmer system and the mortgage system are merely two sides of one and the same process, noted by Marx, of separating the agricultural producers from the landowners. The relations between large- scale and small-scale production are then examined and it is shown that the technical superiority of the former over the latter is beyond doubt. Kautsky effectively demonstrates this thesis and explains in detail how the stability of petty production in agriculture does not depend in any way on its technical rationality but on the fact that the small peasants work far harder than hired labourers and reduce their vital necessities to a level lower than that of the latter. The supporting data which Kautsky cites are in the highest degree interesting and clear-cut. An analysis of the question of associations in agriculture leads Kautsky to the conclusion that associations are undoubtedly indicative of progress but that they are a transition to capitalism and not to communal production; associations do not decrease but increase the superiority of large-scale over small-scale agricultural production. It is absurd to think that the peasant in modern society can go over to communal production. Reference is usually made to statistical data which do not show that the small producer is ousted by the big producer, but which merely serve to show that the development of capitalism in agriculture is much more complicated than in industry. In industry, too, such manifestations as the spread of capitalist work in the home, etc., are not infrequently interconnected with the basic tendency development. But in agriculture the ousting of the small producer is hampered, primarily, by the limited size of the land area; the buying-up of small holdings to form a big holding is a very difficult matter; with intensified farming an increase in the quantity of products obtained is sometimes compatible with a reduction in the area of the land (for which reason statistics operating exclusively with data on the size of the farm have little evidential significance). The concentration of production takes place through the buying-up of many holdings by one proprietor; the latifundia thus formed serve as a basis for one of the higher forms of large-scale capitalist farming. Lastly, it would not even be advantageous for the big land owners to force out the small proprietors completely: the latter provide them with hand! For this reason the landowners and capitalists frequently pass laws that artificially maintain the small peasantry. Petty farming becomes stable when it ceases to compete with large-scale farming, when it is turned into a supplier of labour-power for the latter. The relations between large and small landowners come still closer to those of capitalists and proletarians. Kautsky devotes a special chapter to the “proletarisation of the peasantry,” one that is rich in data, especially on the question of the “auxiliary employments” of the peasants, i.e., the various forms of hired labour.

(more at link)

http://marxists.anu.edu.au/archive/l...ar/kautsky.htm

EDIT: here is a more comprehensive work by Lenin on Kautsky

http://www.marx2mao.com/Lenin/CA99.html#a1s1

[Kid of the Black Hole]

PS Mike, I am giving you the "good" stuff first because there is alot of stuff from Marx that you are not going to like very much lol

Naw don't assume that. It has been a while since I read Marx talking about agriculture, but I don't remember "not liking" anything he said.

Stuff like him saying "small farming is doomed" which might in fact be a word for word quote

I was not being antagonistic by the way, just saying that it would be very easy to cherry-pick comments by Marx

[Two Americas]

OK I found what I as looking for and I am reading it again now.

Chapter Twenty-Seven: Expropriation of the Agricultural Population from the Land
Karl Marx. Capital Volume One

Good reading there kid, if you get a chance. I could use some help fully understanding it, but he is talking about what I have been trying to describe.

[Two Americas]

The last paragraph:

The spoliation of the church’s property, the fraudulent alienation of the State domains, the robbery of the common lands, the usurpation of feudal and clan property, and its transformation into modern private property under circumstances of reckless terrorism, were just so many idyllic methods of primitive accumulation. They conquered the field for capitalistic agriculture, made the soil part and parcel of capital, and created for the town industries the necessary supply of a “free” and outlawed proletariat.